The Moral of the Story

Morality is the theory that every human act must either be right or wrong, and that 99% of them are wrong. – HL Mencken

By Maria Amir

According to a famous study conducted by Gerald S. Wilkinson in 1984, some vampire bats fail to feed on prey on certain nights while others manage to consume a surplus. In these cases, the bats that do eat proceed to regurgitate part of their blood meal to save the others from starvation. Since the bats live in close-knit groups, most can rely on the ‘favor’ being returned at some point in time. Based on this premise, behavioral psychologists Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce have classified basic mammal morality as a ‘a suite of interrelated other-regarding behaviors that cultivate and regulate complex interactions within social groups.” This suite of behaviors traditionally includes empathy, reciprocity, altruism, cooperation, and a sense of fairness and apparently it has always been there… in one form or the other. In other words, human morality, though sophisticated and complex compared to other animals, is essentially a natural phenomenon evolved sufficiently enough to restrict excessive individualism. This is how ‘moral codes’ were formed based on emotional instincts and intuition to serve a greater good. Nowhere does the notion of ‘the greater good’ hold more sway than in literature. For many, it is the evolution of language and imagination that sets the bar for how we, as a species, view and foster morality.

Yet, in spite of its importance, there is nothing as ever-changeable in literature as the concept of morality. What one considers ‘good’ or ‘evil’ has shifted from decade to author and each work of fiction has introduced its own brand of group-think and group consciousness pitted against what we normally identify as the ‘moral center’ of a story i.e. the Gandalfs, Dumbledores and Good Witch Glindas of fiction. It certainly begs the question ‘what exactly is moral’? Is it simply the sensation of guilt before we act or is it how our actions and reactions are weighed by others that classifies someone as moral enough? Either standard seems an utterly arbitrary barometer for character assessment and this inconsistency has been captured by all great writers most effectively. As the decades have progressed and ‘morality in literature’ has become less and less stringent, it appears that characters have become more human and intriguing. Simultaneously, however, much of literature seems to have lost its power in terms of its ability to inspire. Modern books by Marquez, Coelho and Rushdie appeal to the vanity in their reader as the latter keeps seeking out similarities with a protagonist rather than wait for the inspiration that comes from being driven by the intricacies of a plot or being moved by the ‘other worldliness’ of a character. There are advantages to tuning into this increasingly individualist, often narcissistic lead voice in a novel as it caters to the emotive more than the intellect and yet we as a society appear to have lost out on the lessons that literature was once able to teach us. It appears that as the years have progressed readers no longer draw morality from the books they read but rather distil their own into the characters they relate to as flawed. 

If one had to put a pun on it, we could say that the most obvious evolution of ‘morality’ in literature has been the felling of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters into just ‘characters’. Indeed, today’s television and literature practically pulsate on the premise that an interesting character must be flawed, layered and ruthless… the term ‘bad boy’ is usually a good start. In some manner this also reflects a societal shift in morality and towards ideas like chivalry – now most certainly dead; honor – no longer to be traced in battle or oath keeping; loyalty – now denigrating when used in a master-servant neo-colonial nuance, or nationalism – now a most naïve, somewhat obscure ideal to cling to for the bourgeoisie. One can argue that this evolution has made our literature more interesting and gritty but it begs the question of why no single novel of the last 50 years can be set against opuses like Don Quixote, Anna Karenina or Wuthering Heights. Perhaps, unlike life, literature isn’t supposed to keep reinventing morality and its many faces but engage in perfecting it by exploring its depths and peaks.  The purpose, naturally, isn’t to produce cookie-cutter characters but to provide characters with a purpose and readers with closure. Modern novels tend to take the opposite route with monologues and abstract reminiscences framing entire plot lines.

Marilyn Edelstein once said that “A book can be moral if it raises moral questions even if it doesn’t provide moral answers.” To some degree this is true and no one is really qualified to accurately assess how sugar and spice and everything nice fits in with postmodernism. Still, we each find ourselves rooting for characters that prove themselves douched in some virtue as they battle with the set of conflicts an author throws their way. There is a reason why, in spite of pride and avarice, women everywhere still fall in love with Mr. Darcy and Heathcliff but few find themselves fawning over Austen’s lackluster Edmund. It’s because no matter what age we live in, sin… is sexy. And so is the overwhelming need to save a character from themselves and restore them to their moral center, whatever the author or reader deems that to be. That is why very few people manage to affect any real sympathies for the Uriah Heeps, Mr Wickams and Rumpelstiltskins of literature, because no matter how cleverly such characters are contrived it is their motivations that we find wanting and the fact that they seldom, if ever, experience guilt for their actions. And that is what a reader really needs, a flawed character that wants to be better.

Here we are met with the question of a ‘higher authority’ in literature, most readers and writers alike trace this element in the concept of ‘Poetic Justice’, a deeply ingrained desire for us all to see evil punished no matter how much we enjoy the pathos and pain of our ‘good guys’. Even in the much-abused television serials, and the movies where villains wreak hideous punishment on said Good Guys, we must see them triumph in the end otherwise all the action-reaction / action-assimilation / action-procrastination / pessimism-optimism scenarios will have been in vain. This trend alone proves that literature demands from us all–reader and writer alike–a deeper devotion to upholding justic.

When one speaks of great works of literature having an avowed moral purpose, one thinks of a work such as Paradise Lost, in which Milton’s ministrations actually manage to paint Satan as the most interesting character in the poem. His reprise Paradise Regained, where Satan is reduced to a petty schemer falls short by comparison.  There have been writers (good ones) who have rejected any suggestion of moral purpose in their work. Nabokov, in a letter to a friend, once wrote “Writers have no social responsibility,” and certainly he admits none in his own novels but in dozens of his lectures Nabokov repeatedly recognized his debt to the powerful social responsibility of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Ever since Aesop’s Fables, we readers have cultivated an insatiable appetite for stories with morals. While what we all have begun to perceive as moral may have altered with education, media, globalization and our overall jadedness recognizing the fact that ‘being good simply doesn’t pay’ this simply doesn’t hold sway in literature. There is a reason why many of us employ the expression ‘an eye for an eye’ but few of us manage to feel anything beyond loathing for Shakespeare’s Shylock looking to exact his ‘pound of flesh’?

Literature, more than anything, embodies both the collective morality of the times as well as the individual intuitive impulses of the author that paints prejudices and priorities for each character. Cervantes, in Quixote, glorifies all the anointed aspects of archaic morality through an aging gentleman whose mind has been addled by reading books on romance and chivalry. The glorious wretch rides in search of adventures armed with little beside his wit, his companion and ‘moral center’ Sancho and his delusions of a Dulcinea. The ‘morality’ of this epic rests in victory plucked out of defeat, perhaps the first real underdog story we have available to us, with powerful undertones of Jesus the ‘meek and mild’.

It is this Dulcinea-obsessed fool that gave us the words “Demasiada cordura puede ser la peor de las locuras, ver la vida como es y no como debería de ser”, thereby giving birth to the word ‘quixotic’ in the English language, which has come to mean ‘actuated by impracticable ideals of honour’. So, it is to the Man of La Mancha that we readers must bind our allegiance for “Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be”.

Maria Amir is Features Editor for the magazine.

Artwork by Yahat Benazir.